


in everything that's light and gay

by cjscullyjanewaygay (csiwholocked33), talkwordytome



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Unremarkable house, see end notes for more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9294101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/csiwholocked33/pseuds/cjscullyjanewaygay, https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkwordytome/pseuds/talkwordytome
Summary: Mulder laughed and wrapped Scully in his arms. She pressed her ear to his chest and listened to the quiet rustle of his shirt, the sure and steady thump thump of his heart. Still beating against his ribcage, against all possible odds. Lost nine minutes, lost nine years, et cetera. And here they were, like magic, standing in the warm kitchen of an old farmhouse, their children getting ready for bed upstairs. Its own sort of paranormal event.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Contains vague references to Humbug {2x20}, Tunguska {4x08}, Emily {5x07}, Bad Blood {5x12}, and Je Souhaite {7x21}, but no real spoilers provided you have a vague knowledge of Emily's origin story; rated T for mild sexual references/situations, including a game of the sleepover classic "Fuck/Marry/Kill."
> 
> This fic takes place in an AU in which they all live together happily in the unremarkable house and DANA SCULLY FINALLY GETS THE PEACE, LOVE, AND STABILITY SHE DESERVES, GODDAMMIT!!! It's meant to be set in 2008ish, so Emily is 13 and William is 7.

“I’m home!” Scully called, unwinding her scarf. It was a rich maroon color and real cashmere, far nicer than anything she would ever buy for herself, but Mulder had no such qualms. When he had given it to her for Christmas the previous year, he had wrapped it haphazardly round and round her neck, and then leaned back and proclaimed--tongue-in-cheek but still a little too proud-- _you are my flame, dearest._ She folded it carefully and draped it over the top of their very full coat rack with a smile.

It was the middle of October and the first truly cold day of the fall; Virginia’s annual Indian Summer had finally broken enough for her to use her scarf. She had eaten her lunch outside in the hospital courtyard, and she’d swear she’d felt the last remnants of summer slip away with the faintest whisper of a sigh. Like the crickets in _Charlotte’s Web_ : _summer is over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying_. She liked fall, though, liked the negative capability of it; it was a brief window of time in which, looking around at the natural world, death and life were equally palpable.

In their busy house though, there was nothing but life. She went towards the sounds of voices and music and scuffling feet. She found Emily lying on the family room sofa, her nose buried in a book. “ _The Wee Free Men_ ,” Scully said, smiling wryly at the well-loved paperback. “My goodness, how many times have you read that now? A thousand? A thousand and one?”

“At least seventeen,” Emily answered without looking up, scratching her nose absently. “I started keeping track each time I read it last year, but _duh_ I’d read it way more times before then. I just can’t remember exactly how many.” She’d gone as Tiffany Aching for Halloween the year she was ten, and had been extraordinarily indignant when no one understood why she was carrying around a large cast-iron frying pan. Will had only been four, so they had dressed him all in blue and told everyone he was a Nac Mac Feegle.

Scully dropped a kiss on top of Emily’s head, breathing in the shampoo-and-sweat smell of her hair. She was in the middle of a pixie cut phase, and her overlong bangs were pinned out of her face with two barrettes that were shaped like butterflies. Swathes of it were still faintly red from when she’d dyed it with Kool-Aid a few days before the start of the school year. Scully was occasionally still surprised at just how _laissez faire_ her parenting style was. _Though_ , she reasoned, _perspective can do that_. She and Mulder had two whole children, both of them very much alive. After all they had seen, that wasn’t something they could take for granted.

Scully laughed when she noticed the precariously tall stack of books at her daughter’s feet. “It looks like you’re set for the next, oh I don’t know, millennium?”

Emily laughed too, and her mother was privately relieved she could still elicit such a reaction from her rapidly maturing preteen. “More like set for the next week, _maybe_. Dad took us to the library after school.”

Scully’s eyes ran down the column of well-worn spines. _Persepolis_ , some Judy Blume, the newest _Series of Unfortunate Events_ book, a few fantasy titles that all looked the same to her (though she’d never say that to Emily), and... “ _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?”_ she asked, eyebrows raised.

“Dad’s recommendation.”

“Ah.” She ruffled Emily’s hair, and Emily huffed, feeling that at thirteen she was much too old for that sort of thing. “Speaking of dad,” Scully added, “where is he?”

“We’re in the kitchen!” a small voice piped up. “We’re making dinner!”

Scully followed the voice, trailing her fingers delicately, affectionately, over the framed pictures that hung on the wall. There was the  _Wee Free Men_ Halloween, situated in a cluster of frames of related Halloween pictures: Matilda and a little green man, Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker, and most recently Hermione and Indiana Jones, and there was even one of Mulder as Gomez and Scully as Morticia, from the last year they went to the FBI Halloween party. There was a shot of Mulder teaching the kids to rake leaves--Emily looked about eleven, and William about five--and an accompanying shot of the two of them pulling him down into the leaf pile. Emily on a pink Razor scooter and William on a blue Razor scooter last Christmas; Emily and William, sun-brown and beach-burnished, eating crab legs during a family vacation to Maine. An endless litany of school portraits. There was one of Emily admiring a Georgia O’Keefe painting at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts last spring and another of William leaping into the neighborhood pool wearing a snorkel, three pairs of sunglasses, and a single oversized flipper. And of course there was one of their old office, where she’d first met Mr. _Nobody down here but the FBI’s most unwanted_. The poster that had featured so prominently in that basement room was still in their things somewhere, probably in the attic, but Mulder had insisted on buying a new one to hang in their TV room _so the original wouldn’t get damaged._

“Mama, come see!” William called, and she took the final few steps into the kitchen.

“It smells more like _dessert_ than dinner in here,” Scully noted dryly from the doorway.

“Hi, Mama!” William yelled from his perch on the counter. He was wearing his plastic fireman’s helmet and his storm trooper pajamas. His face was smeared with a mix of peanut butter and chocolate.

“We’re making buttered popcorn ice cream sundaes,” Mulder said without turning around, and continued calmly stirring what looked like a pot of caramel sauce. “Will’s been my taste tester.”

“Lucky him,” Scully said, wetting a paper towel to wipe off her seven-year-old’s face. He squirmed away.

“I can lick it off, Mama,” he insisted, and Scully sighed, then smiled.

“I think my method is probably ever so slightly more effective, buddy,” she said solemnly.

“He can’t help it. He’s a wild animal,” Mulder said, turning briefly to kiss Scully on the cheek. “Just like his old man.”

He had a few days’ worth of stubble on his face, and he was wearing a flannel work shirt that Scully had been known to steal and use as pajamas. His jeans were slung low on his hips, his feet calloused and bare. Mulder, at forty-seven, was just as breathtaking to her now as he had been fifteen years ago. Mulder, at forty-seven, was riddled with scars and shrapnel, his body beginning to creak and protest after years of abuse. Mulder, at forty-seven, was as familiar as her own hands and something totally new and unknown every time she came home to find him there. Mulder, at forty-seven, was a study in contradictions; a wonder.

“Earth to Scully,” Mulder said.

Scully started. “Mmm,” she said. “Hi. Scully to Earth. I’m here.” She kissed him, this time on the mouth, and did it a second time for good measure when William shrieked in protest.

“Any particular reason for this very… _decadent_ dinner we’re apparently making?” Scully asked.

“We’re gonna make microwave s’mores, too,” Emily said, trailing into the kitchen and sitting down on a bar stool. “Dad said we could.”

“We’re gonna watch a movie on the side of the house!” William yelled, and did a small, seated dance. “And I get to drink Coke!”

“Not on top of all that sugar and this close to bedtime, no you do not,” Scully said. “You’ll be up all night.”

William latched onto the _up all night_ half of Scully’s statement so firmly that he seemed to entirely miss the _no_ of it, taking it as a promise rather than an admonishment. “Up all night!” he crowed delightedly, hopping off the counter. “Up all night, up all night, up all night!” he sang and spun in circles, narrowly missing crashing into the kitchen table.

Emily rolled her eyes and looked at Scully meaningfully. “Children.”

Scully, having resigned herself to the junk food vibe of the evening, took a marshmallow from an open bag and popped it into her mouth. It was a Friday, after all. “Indeed,” she said thickly. “How was school?” she asked, handing Emily a marshmallow too.

Emily shrugged a single shoulder, a move she had all but patented since she had started middle school. “It was okay,” she said. “I did well on my geometry test, I think. And Gisela and Ruby are in a fight, kind of.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, over some boy. Jack Hesser. He plays basketball. He’s a big bug.” Emily paused, narrowing her eyes. “Hey Mom?”

“Yes?”

“Does having a baby hurt?”

Scully choked on her second marshmallow. “Uhm, why?” she asked, once she had collected herself. “Are you planning on having one anytime soon?”

Emily crinkled her nose. “Ew gross, no. We had to watch a video in health today, and it showed this, like, speeded up time lapse animation of what happens to a lady’s body when she’s pregnant? How your organs shift and get all squished to make room for the baby. The...fetus, or whatever. Does it hurt?”

Scully thought for a moment. “Aspects...of it do, yes,” she said slowly. “But there were parts of being pregnant I liked. And I was, oh, I don’t know. Lonely, somehow. After your brother was born.”

“Were you lonely after I was born?” Emily’s eyes were large with the magnitude of her question; she didn’t know all the details, couldn’t know all of them because Scully herself never even would, but she knew enough to understand it was a tender subject.

Scully blinked. Emily didn’t remember a lot of her very early life--her illnesses, her hospitalizations--though Scully and Mulder had filled her in with bits and pieces as she’d gotten older. Emily knew that the first guardians she could remember had been her adoptive parents, that they had both died but that it hadn’t been her fault. She knew that her birth had occurred under complicated and mysterious circumstances, and that Scully--her biological mother--hadn’t been able to meet her until she was three years old. She did not yet know that she was conceived as a government experiment; Scully couldn’t find a way to explain it that didn’t use the words “medical rape,” couldn’t fathom what it would be like to say those words to her daughter, _about_ her daughter. She knew she would have to some day soon, but not now, not here in their kitchen while Mulder burned caramel and William filled his fireman’s hat with marshmallows, thinking no one was watching. Conversations like that were best left for just before therapy.

“I was very lonely after you were born, even if I didn’t know why,” Scully eventually settled on saying. “And especially lonely when you were lost.”

“You found me though,” Emily supplied, the fairy tale that was her own life. “In California.”

“In California,” Scully confirmed, her smile a bit wavery. “And we were scared we’d lose you again--”

“Because I was really sick, right? And small.”

“You were both of those things, yes,” Scully said.

“But then they figured out what was wrong and they fixed it. The doctors did,” Emily said happily, then frowned. “I’m still small though. People always think I’m a sixth grader, which they _wouldn’t_ if _somebody_ would let me wear makeup to school.” This was said with a pointed glance in Scully’s direction.

“When you get to high school,” Scully said mildly. “You know that.”

“I hate being small,” Emily grumbled.

“‘Though she be but little, she is fierce,’” Mulder intoned, then kissed Scully on the neck, slow and sweet. “Case in point right here.”

“That is revolting,” Emily said, covering her face with her hands.

“Hey Emily?” Will said, from where he lay on the floor, pretending to make snow angels.

“Yeah?”

“When are you gonna get married?”

“I don’t know,” Emily said, shrugging that single shoulder again. “A long time from now. Maybe never.”

Will sat up, looking confused. “Grown-ups always get married,” he insisted.

“No they don’t. Not all of them.”

Will resumed his snow angels. “You could marry Jack Hesser,” he said decisively, as if that settled the matter.

“Ew!” Emily squealed. “I’m not marrying him. I’m not marrying any boy.”

“Then who will you?”

Emily flushed. “Maybe I’ll marry a lady,” she said, sounding cross and nervous and determined, all at the same time.

“But then you can’t have a baby and if you get married that’s what you do.”

“Will, I can do whatever I want,” Emily said, at the same time Scully was saying, “Sweets, there are lots of different ways that a person can have a baby.”

As Emily and William continued to argue over their respective views of love and marriage, Mulder and Scully shared a glance. To date, Emily’s entire social circle had always been comprised entirely of girls. Her girls-only STEM club at school, her all-girl Odyssey of the Mind team. Her school years had been filled with birthday parties, pool parties, trips to the ice skating rink, trips to the movies, trips to the mall, and nary a boy’s name mentioned. In recent months, Scully had begun tentatively bringing up the possibility of dating--anyone, of any gender--to Emily, but Emily had consistently stayed resolutely close-lipped. As far as Scully and Mulder knew, Emily didn’t have any romantic interests at all, but maybe she just hadn’t ever been sure how to explain this part of her life. Scully filed away a mental note to try and coax more on this subject out of Emily later.

“I wonder who thought up buttered popcorn sundaes,” Emily mused, dropping a few popped kernels onto one of the heaping bowls. “It’s such a weird idea.”

“Salty and sweet,” Scully pointed out and kissed Emily on the cheek. “Much like yourself.”

“I am _not_ salty.”

“You just keep telling yourself that, sweetheart,” Mulder said, attempting (and largely failing) to affect a Bogart sort tone.

“Am I salty?” Will asked as he watched the s’mores spin round and round on the microwave plate.

“You,” Scully said, picking him up and turning him upside down until he was delirious with laughter, “are a veritable salt _shaker_ , my friend.” As if to emphasize her point, she shook him gently, then swung him back and forth, his head almost brushing the floor.

“I’m like a broom,” Will giggled.

“You’re like a something, that’s for sure,” Scully said, flipping him right side up again. She brushed a few locks of hair out of his face. It was darkening from red to brown as he got older, and that sometimes made her ache in way she couldn’t ever quite define.

“Go brush your teeth,” Scully said, cupping the apple of William’s cheek in her palm. “You too,” she said, nodding at Emily.

Emily rolled her eyes, and in that moment she looked almost alarmingly like Scully. “We’re just going to eat again in like twenty minutes.”

“It’s the principle of the thing. Also, have you seen what you’re going to be eating? Lucky for you I never took any dentistry classes. Humor me, please.”

“Race you!” Will yelled, darting around Scully and out the door, Emily on his heels. “Guess what!” Scully heard Will call as he rushed up the stairs.

“What?”

“Did you know that one time Mama and Daddy met a vampire?”

Scully narrowed her eyes at Mulder. “Exactly how much do you tell them about the old days?” she asked.

“Only the fun parts,” he said, then grinned wickedly. “They love the story about you losing the invisible corpse.” Scully smacked him on the arm.

“You better watch yourself,” she warned. “I’ve got no shortage of embarrassing anecdotes about _you_. Exhumed any potatoes lately?”

Mulder laughed and wrapped Scully in his arms. She pressed her ear to his chest and listened to the quiet rustle of his shirt, the sure and steady _thump thump_ of his heart. Still beating against his ribcage, against all possible odds. Lost nine minutes, lost nine years, et cetera. And here they were, like magic, standing in the warm kitchen of an old farmhouse, their children getting ready for bed upstairs. Its own sort of paranormal event.

Mulder’s iPod was hooked up to the kitchen speaker, and Elvis was crooning “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You”, the notes drifting softly into the air, iridescent and impossible as soap bubbles. They swayed tenderly in place, less to the rhythm of the song and more to a rhythm of their own.

“This is nice,” Scully murmured. “You’re nice.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” Mulder said, his voice...odd, somehow. Thick and watery. Scully looked up.

“Mulder, you’re not actually... _crying_ , are you?” she asked incredulously.

“Shut-up, Scully,” Mulder said, blinking just a bit too vigorously.

“Hey, that’s my line,” Scully said. “You’ve gone soft in your dotage.” She stood on her tiptoes so she could kiss Mulder’s cheek, then wrinkled her nose. “Scratchy beard.”

“I thought you liked the mountain man look.”

“No, _you_ like the mountain man look,” Scully corrected. “Also, there’s look… and then there’s feel.”

“Not so soft on the tops of the thighs, huh?”

“Mulder!” She glanced nervously around, as if the kids might suddenly pop out of the cabinets. When they didn’t appear, she swatted his arm and tried to swallow a smile.

Mulder just grinned and brought her head back to rest against his chest, leaning down to smell her hair again.

After a minute the song ended and Scully spoke again. “So are you good in here? I want to change into something that doesn’t smell like disinfectant.”

“Yeah, I’ll just plate up the s’mores and then we’re set. I already have the projector set up, and there are blankets and pillows out, too.”

“What _are_ we watching anyway?” Scully asked.

“That’s classified information, Agent Scully.”

“An x file, Agent Mulder?”

“Oh, absolutely.” 

~~~

He’d hung up fairy lights. That’s the first thing Scully noticed; they were the twinkle kind, and they flashed and flirted with the little family on the lawn, like lightning bugs risen from the dead. Say what you will about Fox “Spooky” Mulder, but the man is nothing if not a romantic.

“Wow,” Emily whispered, her voice hushed with frank awe, something that was happening less and less the older she got. Scully pulled her in close for a sideways, grateful hug.

“What’s that for?” Emily asked, a laugh in her voice.

“No reason,” Scully said. “For being Emily.” She smiled at Mulder from over the top of Emily’s head. Mulder winked.

William, a bit too young still to appreciate aesthetic beauty, bounded ahead of them towards where the blankets were piled up in the yard. “I get to sit in the front, by the screen!” he called over his shoulder. “Because I’m smallest!”

“Barely,” Emily said, which was true. Tall for his age, possessing the odd, long-limbed grace of his father, William was mere inches away from surpassing Emily in height.

The blanket setup was something akin to “the Lost Boys meet Pottery Barn”: all the evidence of Scully’s decorative sensibilities (finely cultivated) and all the evidence of Mulder’s organizational capabilities (none to speak of) thrown together. In short, a mess. But a beautiful one.

“Oh, Mulder, those are the good pillows,” Scully said, biting her lip. Mulder had the sudden urge to kiss away the small, worried crinkle that appeared between her eyes.

“All the better for movie watching, my dear,” Mulder said, squeezing her hip affectionately. “Only the finest comforts for the _petits monstres._ ”

“What’s petty mon-streh?” William asked, thoroughly butchering the French pronunciation.

“Little monsters,” Scully answered, shooting a knowing look at William. William bared his teeth and growled.

“Let the wild rumpus start!” he declared, diving headfirst onto his Buzz Lightyear sleeping bag. Emily settled herself on the matching Woody sleeping bag, next to Will.

“You can be very juvenile, William,” she said primly.

“Good,” Will said, his mouth already full of s’mores. He took a long sip of Coke to wash it down and burped.

“Say excuse me,” Scully said mildly.

“Excuse _you_ ,” William said, giggling.

Scully raised her eyebrows in a mock show of offense. “Oh, really?” she said archly. “Excuse _me?_ Oh, William. Poor William. So foolish. So young. A comment so rude can’t possibly go by without some sort of consequence….” she trailed off, then--quick as a flash--she yanked up William’s pajama shirt and blew a raspberry right in the center of his stomach.

Mulder had spent most of that exchange fiddling with the DVD projector, and now he cleared his throat loudly. “If we are all _quite_ ready to settle down,” he said, intentionally silly and posh, “I do believe it’s time to start tonight’s film.”  

William was lying with his head on Scully’s chest, and Emily had her head propped up against Scully’s thigh. “What are we watching, Dad?” Emily asked.

“One of my favorites,” he said. “And incidentally, one of your darling mother’s favorites, too.”

He pressed a button on the projector and the screen flashed and flickered to life. Ocean waves crashed and foamed against each other as orchestrated music gradually built and swelled in the background. Enormous, rocky cliffs towered above everything else; the sky was a radiant, incandescent blue.

_The cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be._

Carl Sagan’s voice, somehow both reassuring and full of wonder, spilled out of the speakers. Emily and William sat up and leaned forward on their hands and knees, their eyes large and glittering. “What’s the cosmos?” William asked. “Is it real?”

“It’s very real,” Mulder said. “It’s the universe; it’s Earth. It’s here, right now.”

_We know that we are approaching the grandest of mysteries._

Scully knew too much about mysteries, knew all too well that there plenty they’d never be able to solve. But she also knew that’s not what Sagan meant; he didn’t mean for his audience to dwell in the anxiety of impossibility. He wanted them to look at the world, all that couldn’t be explained, and simply be glad it existed at all.

Scully looked over at Mulder and found that he was already looking at her. She couldn’t know, of course, but she wondered if perhaps he was thinking something similar. She leaned in and kissed him over the tops of their children’s heads. “It’s a very good choice,” she said. “The show.”

“I thought you might like it.”

 ~~~

After they finished the first episode, Mulder chose to skip around to the fourth, for reasons he chose not to disclose. Scully didn’t know why but she also didn’t ask, chalking it up to some whim of Mulder’s. But when Sagan started talking about “the Mystery of Tunguska,” and she could practically feel the grin as it spreads over Mulder’s face, she suddenly understood.

“See that, Will?” He pointed energetically at the screen, and Scully was glad she was closer to the projector so he couldn’t pause it to drive the point further home.

Will half-sat up in his sleeping bag, stuffed Hobbes still curled protectively in his arm. “What, Dad?”

“A famous scientist just said that something unexplained happened at Tunguska.”

“Is that good?”

“Yes, my dear son; it’s revelatory!”

Scully sighed deeply and was about to explain to William that his daddy’s interpretation of Sagan’s words was by no means rock-solid, but before she could start he asked what revelatory meant, and before Mulder finished answering _that_ question William had already laid back down on his sleeping bag and was no longer listening to them, too busy arranging Hobbes and his small harem of secondary stuffies around his pillow.

William fell asleep by the end of the second episode--to the surprise of no one, except perhaps William--and Emily held out until the middle of the third, but then she drifted off, too. They knew she was really asleep by the steady slowness of her breathing, and Scully covered her with an extra blanket just in case.

Scully had been matching Mulder pretty evenly with her swigs from their thermoses of hot chocolate--Irish, unlike Will and Emily’s--but some time near the end of the third episode he went inside to refill them both. Ordinary Mulder was quippy, romantic, and prone to spontaneous displays of ardor; drunk Mulder was like an overeager standup comic with a tendency towards PDA. By the end of the fourth episode he had tried to grope various parts of her at least seven separate times, so when it was over she convinced him they should pack up and bring the kids inside for the night. It was past eleven, after all.

After they got everybody tucked in--William didn’t even wake when Mulder hoisted him up, carried him in, and then laid him gently into his rocketship bed and Emily was just barely wakeful enough to be coaxed back inside and deposited into her room--they gathered the blankets and settled in their own bed, both feeling far too happy to sleep. Soon they had consumed all of the Irish hot chocolate in the house, including a third “emergency batch” Mulder had mixed up after they tucked the kids in, and Scully couldn’t stop giggling and Mulder couldn’t stop finding ways to make her laugh.

Suddenly, he had another hilarious idea. “Hey, Danaaaa.” He only called her that when he was _really_ in a mood, but at least this time she knew for sure it was a good one.

“What, _Fox_?”

“Let’s play a game.”

That piqued her curiosity. “What kind of game?” she asked, playing idly with the folds of his shirt as she leaned against his chest.

“A sleepover game,” he said. “I’ll start, okay?”

“Um, okay.” She yawned a small, kittenish yawn.

“Dammit Scully, let’s see some excitement!”

“Maybe once I know what we’re playing,” she said, offering him one of her half-smile-smirks.

“Okay! Fuck, marry, kill: Han Solo, Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker. Go. ”

He expected her to protest, or at least to roll her eyes, but evidently the Irish hot chocolate was doing its job, because when he leaned up to look down at her face, she appeared to be considering the question as seriously as she might’ve once considered a suspicious coroner’s report.

“I’d have to kill Luke--sorry buddy, good Jedi and all, but yeah--marry Leia and fuck Han.”

“Okay but you know that if you marry a person that means you _also_ have to fu--”

“Yes Mulder, I am well aware of the most popular fuck-marry-kill dilemma of all time, and actually that’s part of what guided my decision. Han is so unpredictable and irresponsible, and Leia would be able to provide for us better and live a more stable family life. And who’s to say I’d have a problem with fucking Leia, anyway?” She smiled impishly.  “See, I really thought this through.”

Mulder said nothing.

“Still picturing me and Princess Leia?”

“...no?”

“Good boy. Okay, my turn. Fuck, marry, kill: Captain Kirk, Captain Janeway, and Lieutenant Uhura.”

“Oh Scully, this is too easy! Kill Uhura--sorry, honey, nothing personal--fuck Captain Janeway, because as we both know I have a soft spot for commanding, whip-smart redheads, and marry Kirk.”

“Really? Kirk?”

“Yeah; I just think we would do well together. That surprise you?”

“Well Mulder, you know, if you marry someone--”

“Ah but see, Kirk gets all kinds of hot alien ladies; it’d be a constant stream of beautiful women of every species in and out of our home ship.”

“Oh my God,” she rolled her eyes slightly, but the motion was made less effective by the giggle that accompanied it. “So who are my next choices?”

“I’m gonna break theme and do some non-space-travellers: Mothman, Flukeworm, and Alex Krycek.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake… well it’s gotta be kill Krycek, so I guess then I have to fuck Mothman and marry the Flukeworm?” She was giggling again, and he couldn't get enough of the sound.

“Good choice on the first bit, but really, marry the Flukeworm? I doubt he’d be able to hold a steady job, Scully.”

“He’d probably unload the dishwasher more often than you do though,” she shot back.

Mulder responded the only way he knew how: by flipping her so that he was on top and tickling the bejeezus out of her.

She squirmed adorably under him, and after a minute or so he pinned her arms down and kissed her nose affectionately. “Probably wouldn’t make a great bedfellow though, what with the slime and all those teeth.” 

“This is true,” she admitted. “Okay, I’ve got the best one yet: Janeway, Leia, and yours truly.”

“Come on Scully, you know that’s not fair!”

“I’ll even let you take the easy way out: do fuck, marry, get drunk with instead.”

Mulder stilled, sat back a little bit, and became suddenly pensive.

After a minute he still hadn’t said anything and Scully started feeling nervous. “Mulder, it’s just a stupid game, you know I’m only kidding; I’d never make you choo--” 

He shushed her mid-phrase with a finger to her lips. “No no, I’ve got my answer,” he said seriously. “Marry Scully,” he began, “get drunk with Scully,” he leaned down so their cheeks were touching and he was speaking right into her ear “and fuck Scully.”

Scully swallowed thickly. “Sounds good to me.”

“Good,” he answered, and began kissing and nipping down her neck.  

~~~

They woke to the sound of William crying out {or Scully did, anyway; Mulder had a tendency to sleep like a log} around 3am. “Mama! Daddy! Mama! I had a bad dream!”

Wrapping herself in Mulder’s flannel robe, Scully hurried into William’s bedroom and found him in a ball in the center of his bed, grasping Hobbes and whimpering. He sat up when he heard her walk into the room, his eyes sleep-fogged and glassy with tears. Scully sat down on the bed next to him and began to rub his back, and he buried his hot little face into her pajama shirt.

“Mama, Mama I had a nightmare, a really very bad one… I was standing on the porch but it was all dark, all around everywhere like that dark matters stuff, from the show, I couldn’t find anyone and I couldn’t move and it kept getting bigger around me and--”

“Blow, sweetheart.” At her instruction, he broke off to blow his running nose into the tissue she was holding against his face.

“It was so scary, Mama,” William hiccoughed.

“I know buddy, but I promise it wasn’t real. Shh shh, I’m here. You’re here. It’s okay. You’re okay.” She rubbed his back until the crying gradually slowed. “We’re all okay.” She thought of herself, the endless repetitions of, _I’m fine_. But this was different somehow, light years away from where she’d began. A promise, not a bargain, a plea, a wish.  

After a few minutes his eyes were falling closed again and she thought maybe she could get him to lie back down, but when she started fluffing his pillow he shook his head and clung to her more tightly. Then he leaned up and cupped his little hand around his mouth and whispered a confession: “Mama, I’m scared to go back to sleep alone. Because what...what if it’s still there? And...and then when I close my eyes and I fall and fall and I’m gone away forever and--”

“How about,” Scully cut William off gently, before he could work himself up into more tears, “you come in and sleep with Mama and Daddy for a while?”

He took a moment to consider this, weighing the potential babyishness of the act against the fear of having another nightmare. “Okay,” he said eventually, and nodded very gravely.

Scully took his hand and led him back to their room, where Mulder had turned over but not completely woken. She settled William inside the curve of her body, scooting over just enough to bump up against Mulder to make space, and that made him stir, but he didn’t give any signs of consciousness.

“I can’t stop thinking of it, Mama.”

“What if I sang you a lullaby, like when you were younger? Would that help?”

She felt William nod.

“Okay. Just close your eyes and think of the song and nothing else bad, okay buddy?”

He nodded again, hugged Hobbes tighter to his chest, and allowed his eyes to fall closed.

Scully cleared her throat as quietly as she was able to and started the only song she was sure she would remember every word of.

 _“I’ll be seeing you,”_ she sang, low and small, “i _n all the old familiar places…”_

She felt Mulder stir again, and could tell by his breathing that he had finally at least halfway woken up. She tried to pretend she didn’t notice; there was something so vulnerable about singing a lullaby, and sometimes it still made her nervous to be heard by anyone but her children.

_“That this heart of mine embraces, all day through…”_

William had stopped fidgeting and seemed to be settling back into a place of sleepiness.

“I _n that small cafe, the park across the way, the children’s carousel; the chestnut trees, a wishing well…”_

Mulder’s breathing told her that he was really awake now, but he just snuggled up behind her without a word.

_“I’ll be seeing you, in every lovely Summer’s day…”_

Mulder’s face was in her hair, breathing her in, and William’s breathing against her chest was slowing towards slumber, and it was such a beautiful moment she almost did forget the words, the same ones her mother had sung her when she was little and couldn’t sleep… but they came back as easy as air on her next breath.

“ _In everything that’s light and gay; I’ll always think of you that way…”_

Mulder wrapped an arm over her waist and sighed and she would swear it sounded like an “I love you.”

_“I’ll find you in the morning sun, and when the night is new…”_

She didn’t need to find them anymore, not now; they were all right here, and Emily just a wall away. Her own eyes were shutting against her wishes and she struggled to get out the last line, but from behind her Mulder hummed along with the words of the last phrase:

_“I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> The song Scully sings to William {and Mulder} at the end is "I'll Be Seeing You," preferably the Billie Holiday recording, and the title of the fic is also taken from its lyrics. The show they're watching on the side of the house is the original Carl Sagan Cosmos series. The book mentioned in most detail in the section with Emily's stack of books is "The Wee Free Men" by Terry Pratchett.


End file.
